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Glacier National Park, Montana


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Tell me everything you know and enjoy about Glacier.

 

We are trying to decide on a vacation for next summer. We just bought a camper and want to go, go, go!

 

How many days to stay? What to do? Best campgrounds? Best time to go between Memorial Day and the middle of August? (I hate crowds! :001_smile:)

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It is easier to drive from east to west on Going to the Sun Road (Plunging to Your Death Road). You can drive west to east on Highway 2 which is just south of Going to the Sun. Give yourself a few hours to drive Going to the Sun.

 

The food is a bit pricey and ho-hum inside the Park, so you might want to consider packing something and bringing it along.

 

I prefer staying on the west side of Glacier. More to do.

 

You can visit the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Browning, Montana, where they have the Museum of the Plains Indian. Whatever you do, do not take Looking Glass Hill Road (Highway 49). It hugs a mountainside and has no guard rails. If you do take it, pray that you don't meet a group of cows or, worse, a grizzly bear. It's a scary drive, and when we drove it, there were no cars except a Corvette (and he was hugging the mountain) -- unlike what this article from Wiki claims.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montana_Highway_49

 

Glacier has grizzlies, so you'll want to read up on how to keep yourself safe from them. They do have maulings in Glacier. I think the average is 2 per year.

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If you want to go over the mountains (I think its Going to the Sun road), check the size of your camper and the size of the road.

 

DH's cousins tried with a trailer camper that was just a little too large. They drove as far as they could, turned around, and had to go all the way around the park on another road. His uncle was annoyed. :tongue_smilie: I saw the camper and it didn't seem huge to me, but it did not work on that road...its not a wide road.

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I went there on a family reunion while I was in college and it is the most beautiful place I've ever been. I don't have any recommendations as to places to stay and such as I wasn't in charge of those details and I remember very little. I would suggest using a smaller car or vehicle on the Going to the Sun Road. I rode that road with my sister in her Suburban and she was very nervous with the winding, narrow, high road.

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I second June as the time to go. We hate crowds too. The one drawback is that the Going to the Sun Road is not usually open until the first week of July, but this year I think they managed to get it open a little earlier because of the milder winter. We planned to spend 5 days there, but because it rained pretty hard one day, we ended up going into the park only 3 days. We spent two days on the west side and then one day in Two Medicine and one day in St. Mary. If we'd had passports I think we would have gone up to the adjoining Waterton National Park in Canada.

 

Our general schedule visiting national parks is to first get the Junior Ranger books to figure out what we "need" to do and then find a hike to go on each morning, eat our packed lunch and go on another hike in the afternoon. We generally take one of the afternoons to visit a museum. In this case, we visited the lodges too. We splurged and bought tickets for a ranger-led boat tour on Lake McDonald. It was fun, but it might not have been with a different ranger.

 

Hope you have a great time. We loved Glacier.

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We went in early August and had a wonderful time. We stayed on the East side but did do the Going to the Sun Road. We saw mountain goats in the parking lot of the visitor's center there. We also saw a mama grizzly and her two cubs. Don't be like the idiot we saw who decided to cross the road and start walking towards the cubs (probably abut 25 ft. from them) to take a picture. Luckily for him, the cubs ran away faster than he walked and MOmma bear decided to follow them rather than confront him. Don't bother the animals.

 

Anyway, we did this trip along with other National Parks of the Northern Rockies (both US and Canada) as our 25th anniversary trip which we did take our girls with us too.

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We had a great time at Glacier, we have been twice and will probably go again someday. The white water rafting was fun, but not as intense as the Deschutes River in Oregon, and the wind is too strong for canoeing in my opinion, lol. Lots of gorgeous hiking though. Good restaurants in Whitefish and the surrounding area.

 

On our way to Glacier we saw a sign with an arrow that said Kalispell, this way. A few minutes later we saw a sign with an arrow pointed in the opposite direction that said, Kalispell this way, a few minutes later we saw a sign that said, Kalispell straight ahead, and there it was. Our family joke is that all roads lead to Kalispell, lol.

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